The regulations of the Public Assistance are confidential

On July 16, the Œuvre related the painful story of Mrs. Bulher, from whom an inspector of the Public Assistance wanted to take her child away to send him to the Assisted Children, because he had seen the baby's wet sheets at the home of his nanny, Mrs. Bouchaud.

Does the Public Assistance have the monstrous right to forcibly take children away from their parents? We asked.

This question should not remain unanswered. Several came to us immediately. One reminded us of the dreadful suicide of a little ward found dead recently in a cistern, in Arnay-le-Duc. The other affirmed that, if not the regulations, at least the application that is too often made of them, made wards "beings without confession, without faith or law, by placing them outside the common law".

The only culprit is the outdated regulations imposed on children, said one of our correspondents, and the unfortunate tendency that we too often have, in certain circles, to consider that at twenty-one a ward will inevitably have become an idiot or a bandit…

To be able to judge this, we had to see the incriminated regulation which dates back about twenty years.

This is not an easy thing. If it is, in fact, easy to obtain the text of the law of June 27, 1904, or the Paul Strauss law "which, by repealing all previous texts, constitutes the status of "Assisted Children", or even that of the law of June 28, 1904, relating to the education of difficult or vicious wards; If one can acquire without too much difficulty the work of Mr. E. Alcindor, deputy inspector general of administrative services, who is an authority on these matters, it is much more difficult to obtain communication of the regulation in question for the department of the Seine.

It is not only that the officials of the service who must apply it and for this reason consult it often, absolutely hide behind professional secrecy, which article 373 of the Penal Code does not expressly recognize for them. But it is that they possess only one single copy... and that they naturally do not want to give it up.

A single copy! That is all that exists, avenue Victoria, to regulate the fate of approximately 35,000 children, wards in custody or in deposit, and who are looked after by the Public Assistance of the Seine.

If, in the 86 other departments of Public Assistance, there is also no such document, no one could be surprised that among the 155,000 or so children whose education falls to the municipalities and departments and whose supervision to the State, some sometimes have reason to complain or to kill themselves.

Unless the inspectors, sub-inspectors and various clerks know the contents of this document by heart and can thus apply without failure or error all of its provisions, coercive or benevolent, the opposite would be surprising.

But Public Assistance perhaps does not have the resources necessary to pay for a reprint of its regulations.
This is what should be examined. with a few other things.

E.B.